


Deep Seas and High Stakes

by ceceliatarleton, shaky_mayhemm



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/M, M/M, MerMay, Other, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24341674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceceliatarleton/pseuds/ceceliatarleton, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaky_mayhemm/pseuds/shaky_mayhemm
Summary: A collection of drabbles, scenes, and art setting up an where merfolk Aqua, Sora, Roxas, Kairi, and Xion find love with human sailors, and clash with the dastardly pirate crew The Thirteen as well as seawizard Xehanort and his apprentice, their estranged brother, Vanitas.  Mostly fluff with a vague plot to emerge as more scenes are added, though you may find your story out of order. So far, all can be read/viewed separately.
Relationships: Aqua & Naminé (Kingdom Hearts), Axel/Roxas (Kingdom Hearts), Demyx/Xion, Kairi/Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Kudos: 18





	1. Danger of the Depths (Aqua & Naminé)

https://shaky-mayhemm.tumblr.com/post/618406872384503808/sum-quick-lil-mermaid-and-fishermen-sketches-in#notes

Naminé knew she should count herself fortunate. Perhaps, she should even feel honored. Aqua didn’t come out of the water for just anyone, even now, verging a year after The Kingdom Below–an imperfect translation of the mercity’s true name, Naminé was sure, but one that had stuck after Riku had told his rambling story and one that none of the merfolk, including their blue haired young leader who typically found every occasion she could for objections, protested–had become more open secret than legend amongst half the seaside town of Destiny. The young artist didn’t feel lucky though. She felt like she had swallowed a live eel that was slowly making it’s way down her throat, however, as the mermaid regarded her with eyes adapted to hunting underwater, too wide and too bright to pass for human, that were still one of the merfolk’s more humanlike features. 

The queen was beautiful, no doubt, despite her scales and other oddities. They all were breathtaking in their own ways. Naminé saw at once why the crew of the Dawnfire had fallen in love. The greater mystery was how they forced themselves to come back to land. That didn’t mean, however, that Naminé wasn’t at least a little unnerved by the rulers of the sea. Personally, she would have preferred to admire them from afar, catching a flash of a fin in the distance she could sigh dreamily at, wondering how it felt to cut through the water, fast and free. She hadn’t voiced that preference though, at least not in so many words. She had sputtered concerns that she wasn’t the one to come to for a royal portrait, no matter how unorthodox the kingdom or ruler, and she’d asked if it was safe, but she hadn’t made it clear that it wasn’t only the safety of the mermaid posing on land that she was worried about. So here she was, propelled by curiosity and her inability to say no, standing in the sand, trying to capture the balance between seductive beauty, the unsettling other, and the danger of a predator. 

“Do you need another bucket of water poured over you?” Naminé asked, peering around her easel more obviously than the quick darts of eye she had been doing previously, speaking slowly so Aqua could read her lips. She failed at keeping eye contact before the merqueen even answered. Did all merfolk not blink or was it just a quirk of Aqua’s?

Aqua let out the short chirp Naminé had already learned meant no. The blonde girl repeated the noise under her breath, further committing the intonation to memory. She had a feeling she would be practicing imitating the dolphin-like noises of the merfolks’ native tongue in her room that night. Ventus had warned her that the queen wouldn’t speak English to her. She’d wondered aloud why the rest of Aqua’s people hadn’t taught her yet. Ventus had smiled, shook his head, and corrected her gently. Aqua knew English. She simply refused to speak it. According to Ventus, Terra was becoming quite fluent in mermish under his tutelage however, which begged a question Ventus refused to answer. How did he know mermish so well in the first place, well enough he’d taught Riku even before he started teaching Terra, when he’d been the last to meet the creatures of the deep?

“Alright then. Tell me when you do.” Naminé found speaking loudly enough she could be sure the air didn’t steal her words before they reached Aqua difficult. It was silly. Aqua was fully beached and may even need help to return to the water if the tide didn’t shift again before she was done posing for Naminé , but the artist was helpless against visions of what her tail could do (moving with enough speed and force that if it hit you it could temporarily paralyze you, containing enough muscular power it could snap bones easily, yet demonstrating enough dexterity near the fin that it could wield tools and weapons) and of a flash of pointed shark’s teeth that Naminé wasn’t sure if she’d imagined or not that forced her to think in turn of those blue eyes full of life turning empty like a shark’s as well. Naminé swallowed her baseless fear and the imaginary eel, and painted in lines indicating the delicate gold chains that Aqua wore twined around her wrists, her tail, and anywhere Kairi and Xion could convince her to drape them. Naminé had heard that story multiple times from multiple sources, how gifts given to the younger mermaid princesses inevitably found their way to decorating Aqua and making her look “queenly." 

"Calm.” The single word almost made Naminé drop her brush. “You are…” It was clear Aqua wasn’t used to using her throat to form human words. Though her enunciation was careful and clear, there was a hesitance and strain evident. Blue brows furrowed and Naminé could almost see Aqua sorting through vocabulary in her mind. “…Part of my school.”

“School?” Naminé repeated dumbly, meaning coming to her a moment later, a swarm of colorful fish swimming in formation through her mind’s eye.

“You were taken too?”

The fragmented question brought Naminé back to a time she’d rather forget. A lightless brig on a ship that never was. She’d known Xemnas had other “guests” while she was there. Demyx was innocently chatty and Xigbar, Marluxia, and Larxene all pointedly, manipulatingly so. She hadn’t found out all the details though until her rescue (accidental rescue, she’d never been who they were there for) by the crew of the Dawnfire. 

Namine nodded, but didn’t go into the detail Aqua may not have cared about of the how and why and ransoms never paid.

“That will never happen again.” Aqua’s eyes did darken like a shark’s but Namine's visions were changing. The vengeful queen of the sea dragging Marluxia down a trench where light never shone, tail squeezing the life from him before the pressure could. “You are Terra’s and you are mine.”

“Thank you. ” Namine had trouble with her voice again, for much different reasons than before. She’d pour all she had into the portrait of the noble warrior matron of the seas.


	2. The Green Flash (Axel/Roxas)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the one that was actually written first and the only one not attached to a picture.

“What else can you tell me about the sunset?" 

Axel made a noise in his throat partway between a laugh and a whine and popped open two more buttons on his shirt, tugging the sodden material away from his chest, a useless endeavor as it clung right back. Another minute or two and the shirt would probably end up completely off and spread out to dry beside them on the sandbar they were sitting on. "You’re killing me. I already used up my best material with ‘why the sun sets red.’ You were supposed to just be impressed with that alone." 

"You are very impressive,” Roxas hummed the words as if debating, innocent tone at odds with the way eyes a purer blue than the ocean he’d come from, swept Axel from head to foot, “but that doesn’t mean you still don’t need to work for it." 

Axel didn’t miss the self-satisfied flick of Roxas’s tail, reminiscent of Riku’s puppy wagging its tail, as the merman congratulated himself for pulling off the flirt and this time the redhead let out an actual laugh. "Smooth." 

He had to duck out of the way as Roxas uncurled his tail completely so the fin dipped back into the water to stir up a large splash aimed at the sailor’s face. "Hey! Hey! None of that now.” Roxas ignored the protest and sent another wave Axel’s way, tipping his head back and crowing as it hit its mark and plastered Axel's hair back down again. Axel sputtered and shook his head like a dog. “ If you’re going to drown me, I demand a kiss first. Isn’t that the bargain?”

Roxas froze for a second, tail curled like the top of a question mark and head tipped to the side like a curious bird. His own hair was half dried, sticking up at odd angles as if it were trying to escape his scalp and go on its own, separate adventures in the surface world. “What bargain?” He asked finally, once he’d settled his inner debate about whether he should just call Axel’s bluff, kiss him, and drag him off the sandbar back into the water, or whether he’d rather know what significance or story was behind the words the human lilted like a joke. 

“Oh.” Axel wore a small, disappointed frown that made Roxas regret his call, though the sailor was only regretting his own words bringing up a potentially awkward topic. The redhead took a moment before explaining, watching his feet in the water next to Roxas’s tail, and sparing a moment for the random wondering of what Riku or Terra would conclude if they came across his abandoned life boat in open water, empty except for his boots and belt. “It’s a stupid human legend about merpeople. Beautiful men and women appearing to sailors, luring them to lean overboard to capture a kiss and then pulling them down to a watery death. There are other stories though….still usually about death.” Axel pulled at his wet, clinging shirt again though it wasn’t the sticking material that made him feel uncomfortable. 

“That is stupid,” Roxas agreed, more confused than offended. “What would the merpeople get out of it?”

“I dunno. Maybe you’re supposed to eat humans.”

“Well, you do taste good. I learned that yesterday and I think I’d like to go back for another sample…” Roxas’s teasing trailed off when Axel choked. “What?”

“Nothing at all.”

Roxas pouted for a second, hating the feeling that he was missing something, almost muttering that maybe now he wouldn’t kiss Axel again out of spite, but holding back because there had to be a way to punish the human for withholding that wasn’t him punishing himself as well. “If anything that story goes the other way. Humans take fish from the water to eat all the time.”

“I know. It’s how I make a living,” Axel gave a long sigh, wishing he’d jumped on telling a second sunset story when he had the chance.

“But so do merfolk,” Roxas amended quickly. “Not out of the water, but we eat fish I mean.”

“I wanted to ask how that works…” Axel waved his own question away before he even completed it. Debates about what constituted as cannibalism and why eating people was so distasteful if eating fish wasn’t for merpeople were not what he wanted to spend their limited time on. He whistled through his teeth. “The sunset, right? You wanted me to tell you a story about the sunset?”

“Merfolk have a lot of legends about humans catching merfolk in nets and killing them or putting them on display in glass cages. Something called a side show?” Roxas picked at his left thumb nail with his right and found he apparently literally could not control his mouth. “Yeah…the sun.”

Axel hooked a finger under Roxas’s chin and urged it up so the merman wasn’t starting at his own tail anymore, though Roxas couldn’t help focusing on glass bottle green eyes instead of the setting sun. Funny how all the worry about coming from different worlds slipped away all at once. “Have you ever heard of the flash of green at sunset?” When Roxas shook his head minutely, wondering whether he’d be able to retain the explanation the sailor was about to give when it was easy to get distracted just watching his lips move or noticing how when the sky turned red as the sun slipped away the horizon looked like it was all an extension of his wild hair, Axel continued. “It’s another trick of light refraction. When the atmosphere is just right, if you watch closely the moment the sun disappears over the water, there’s a green flash that lights up the sky only for a moment. Some sailors try for years just to catch the green flash once. There are a lot of different legends attached to it, all contradictory: good luck for your next voyage, omen of a shipwreck, souls returning from Davy Jones’ locker…" 

Roxas wasn’t fully aware of leaning closer and angling his head. He was listening; he swore he was. 

"My favorite though is the idea that when you see the green flash at sunset you can see through all deception of the heart. You’re no longer tricked by, ya know, nice smiles and flattering words. You know who is true and who just wants something from you, and you can spot the one born to love you in…a…glance.”

Roxas finally gave into temptation and grabbed Axel’s open collar and pulled his head down so their lips met. He sighed happily and Axel deepened the kiss as his arms wrapped around the merman and tugged him closer. They parted a few seconds later, Roxas not having much breath after having spent so long half dried out, but Roxas refused to draw back far, keeping their foreheads pressed together and his hands fisted in Axel’s partially unbuttoned shirt. “Sorry, I saw the flash.”

Axel took a second to catch up, blinking the eyes Roxas was referencing, before slowly smiling, “So you know?”

“I know.”

“I’d gladly let you drag me to the depths of the sea." 

"Maybe the next date. I’m not sure you’re ready to meet my family.”


	3. Weighing the Scales (Axel/Roxas)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the second of these pictures 
> 
> https://shaky-mayhemm.tumblr.com/post/618406872384503808/sum-quick-lil-mermaid-and-fishermen-sketches-in#notes

“I told you to stop with the splashing,” Axel groaned from behind a prison made from his own hair heavily weighed down by the torrent of water Roxas had just sent his way. The worst part in the sailor’s opinion was not that Roxas inevitably always found a moment when he had his mouth open and would end up swallowing salt water or that the merman waited until he’d started to dry out, but that, when the water hit him from behind and glued his hair to his eyes instead of sweeping it away from his face, he missed the details of Roxas celebrating his victory: the subtle shoulder shimmy the merman flushed over when Axel pointed it out but couldn’t seem to stop himself from performing, the amused light of his eyes, and the wagging of the tip of his fin. 

“Then you shouldn’t say things that make me need to splash you,” Roxas reasoned, leveraging himself up a bit more out of the water by pressing his crossed arms more tightly into the rock they were leaning on. Axel’s insistence he stay in the water from now on while they talked after he’d noticed Roxas breathing more raggedly than usual last night when their traditional sunset date had extended into stargazing under a fully risen moon was proving a tough rule to follow. He didn’t like anything that made it more difficult to touch his human. At least sending waves of water at Axel still felt like a point of connection. “You’re being very charming, for a change,” even with the teasing, the blonde merman spoke in a tone warm enough to melt the sailor as Axel always made him want to melt, but ultimately it was just to coax Axel into listening and hopefully taking the next part seriously, “But you can’t be considering bargaining with Master Xehanort even as a joke.”

Axel parted the curtain of red and swept his dripping hair behind his shoulders. “It wasn’t a joke.” He waved forestalling hands before he could be yelled at or splashed again. “I was just saying that _if_ one of us was going to cut a deal with your sea monster exiled king boogeyman, it should be me. You were the one who proposed,” Axel paused, letting the moment gain significance and sent Roxas’s heart thundering as it sunk in what his sighed wishes about finding a way to be together permanently instead of just having a few sunsets stolen when they could might have sounded like, “…that we go seek out your sea-wizard. I disagree. The fact that there was a cautionary tale backstory to go with the name you felt guilty enough about bringing up the option to share is enough of a reason to leave a few entire oceans between him and you, but, hypothetically, I have no family and I would look absolutely devastating in some scales.”

“What about Riku, Terra, and Ventus? What about the Saïx you talked about? We both have families.”

Axel hemmed consideringly, but didn’t acknowledge the point otherwise. “Have you ever traveled far enough north to see an aurora? Probably not, the water would be too cold. I haven’t seen the aurora myself. Just heard stories. Always wanted to see it.” He had his eyes fixed on the sky. No more talk of Xehanort tonight. Topic closed as quick as a blink.

Roxas suppressed the urge to pout and become indignant that Axel thought they could just avoid the conversation of what they would do long-term now that it had been brought up. “What’s an aurora?” he asked, resigned, after a moment.

“It’s another light in the sky thing. Close your eyes. I’ll start by describing it….”


	4. Lost in Translation (Sora/Riku with a little mention of Sora/Kairi)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the third of these pictures 
> 
> https://shaky-mayhemm.tumblr.com/post/618406872384503808/sum-quick-lil-mermaid-and-fishermen-sketches-in#notes
> 
> Sora doesn't speak human like Roxas and Xion, so he and Riku have a little negotiation to get through. Mermish in italics.

“ _Hello_ ,” Sora enunciated slowly and clearly.

“ _Sea Urchin_ ,” the sailor chittered back uncertainly. 

Sora shook his head and repeated, “ _Hello_." 

” _Hello_ ,“ the sailor mimicked. 

Sora resisted the urge to slap his fin against the surface of the water in triumph. There was a delicate balance at play. His human had proved more skittish than the red one, even though the handsome silver sailor had technically sought him out first, if falling out of his boat could be counted. Sora would have thought pulling him back to surface and clearing his lungs of water–after a brief confusion where he’d tried to coax the human to swallow more sea to make him feel better enough to wake up–would have proven his intentions were good. He’d even brought the human a fish to eat and get his strength up, though he supposed the sailor must have been too worn out by almost drowning to be hungry because he’d batted the still flopping fish away from his mouth quite forcefully when Sora had tried to feed him. Maybe he just didn’t like to eat when he first woke up. 

Even with these good first impressions though, the sailor had made a loud screech when he’d first noticed Sora’s tail and had dug his hands into the ground and propelled himself backward as far away as he could with the limited room he was allowed on the tiny rock island jutting out of the water Sora had brought him to. He’d scrubbed his eyes with his hands and spouted a series of incomprehensible but almost angry sounding mouth noises, making Sora wish he hadn’t kept quite so far a distance when he’d followed Roxas to see where he kept disappearing to (Sora had known for awhile Xion was just making up stories to cover for his twin. The day she ran out of plausible excuses like trying to fill the trench so the ocean floor was even or cleaning the shells of geriatric turtles as community service, and flat out claimed Roxas had been eaten by a whale had cinched it. Granted, Kairi had said Roxas was sneaking to the surface weeks ago, but Kairi hadn’t been around when Roxas and Sora had last tried to move sand to the trenches to fill them so she didn’t know how convincing that excuse sounded). If he’d been better a better spy when he’d observed Roxas meeting with the red maned sailor then maybe he’d have an idea of what mouth sounds would soothe this human. 

He’d done well enough without human words so far though, even if pantomime was tough. There had been a major setback when Sora had swum quick circles around the rock to ask if the human felt well enough to swim with him back to proper land or try to find his boat now that the storm had passed, and the sailor had seemed to interpret this as "I am a shark about to eat you,” but they’d gotten back on track and Sora had coaxed the sailor to at least trust him enough to keep to the edge of the rock instead of the middle. He almost ruined it when the silver-haired human had first felt confident enough to dip his feet in the water–to prove to himself Sora wouldn’t pull him right in–and Sora had immediately swum up between his legs, but this, like the other setbacks, was eventually remedied and they were now back in that position, human sitting on the edge of the rock and Sora bracketed between his legs, arms resting above the sailor’s knees, face tilted up as he tried to teach him to talk properly. If he stayed as still and calm as he could, he was sure he could avoid startling the sailor again. He’d already been tested when a hand had reached out and combed softly through his hair. He hadn’t been able to help a contented sigh when he’d been petted–grateful that the human was realizing he was friendly and was being friendly back, that was the only reason–but it hadn’t scared the human. just made him go pink for a moment.

“Sora,” Sora pointed at his chest, then tilted his head to the side like a question.

“Sora?” the human reached out again and tentatively brushed his fingers against the smattering of scales on Sora’s shoulder, like he wasn’t sure if they were shells or attached to the merman since most of the rest of his upper body didn’t show signs of being part fish.

Sora nodded vigorously. “Sora,” he kept a hand pressed against his chest for a moment and then patted the front of the human’s weird baggy detached skin over his heart. 

“Riku,” the sailor supplied.

“ Reee-coo? Riku! Riku, Riku Riku.” Sora tested out the name, smiling at the bubbling feeling the sounds caused in his chest. 

“Sora.” Riku was smiling too. Fingers gently combed through Sora’s hair once more.

Sora leaned his head against the side of Riku’s knee, humming the name one last time, “Riku,” and debating what should come next. Something useful. Something that would help him get Riku back to where he belonged or signal him to wait while Sora went and found Roxas to help. He looked up at Riku’s face to see if the human had any ideas. The sun on the surface of the water, making it sparkle and dance like it didn’t below and bringing out warmth in the blue-green had nothing on Riku’s eyes. “ _Pretty._ ”

“ _Pretty_ ,” Riku agreed, while continuing to pet through Sora’s hair, and the merman turned his face to the side, burying it against Riku’s leg in embarrassment. The human couldn’t know what he was saying.

“ _You weren’t supposed to repeat that one. I’m not…you know. I’m just me. Even Kairi was disappointed. She didn’t say it but I know she had to be. She came all the way from the Radiant Seas to see this prince she’s supposed to marry…and ohh let me tell you that’s awkward…or not really that awkward because I’m not sure she wants to get married either….not right away at least…What was I saying? Kairi makes me feel small because she’s a pearl and I’m just like grit stuck in a clam…which also becomes a pearl I guess, but that’s not the point because she also somehow makes me feel strong? Like I can do anything? Like save you. I think my whole life was leading up to saving you from drowning. Is that stupid to say since we just met_?” Sora paused to gulp in air, even if the dryness of it made his throat burn a bit, and risked a glance to see how Riku was taking his rambling. He’d felt the absence of the hand in his hair and now he saw it was because Riku was covering his ears. “ _Sorry, you’re right. That was coming on way too strong, and you probably don’t care about the Kairi stuff, though I bet you would care about Kairi if you met her. You can’t help it. Kairi’s amazing._ ”

Riku pushed a single finger against Sora’s lips, leaning in close enough as he did that Sora was slightly concerned he’d topple into the water. “Shh” Sora went slightly cross-eyed looking at the digit and had to resist the nonsensical urge to lick it. “You need to go slowly, Sora.”

“ _I don’t know what you’re saying_ ,” Sora confessed.

“ _Pretty_?” Riku tried to reorient the conversation.

“ _Forget that_ ,” Sora ordered.

“ _Pretty_?” Riku tried again, thinking his pronunciation was off.

Sora yelled a noise of wordless frustration and Riku imitated him. 

“ _You need to stop fixating on that word. Let’s pick another word. Sky. Boat. Octopus! Algae!_ ”

“ _Pretty_?” Riku tugged on his weird second skin as he asked the question. “ _Pretty_?” He pulled a lock of his hair. “ _Pretty_?” He gently bopped Sora’s nose. 

“ _Yes, you’re really pretty. You’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. No! Not me. I already told you that I’m not pretty! Technically you’re not pretty either. I should have said handsome but….you are **so** pretty, but you really need to focus._”

“Too loud,” Riku frowned for emphasis. “Too fast. Slow down.”

“ _I don’t know what you’re saying_!” Sora found himself speaking more loudly as he repeated his earlier words.

“I wish I knew what you were saying,” Riku sighed.

“ _I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE SAYING!_ ” Sora made large hand gestures, waving by his mouth, to help the conversation.

“Too loud,” Riku just spoke more insistently and mimed covering his ears.

“ _THOSE ARE EARS. EARS!_ ” Once Sora started yelling, it was hard to stop.

“Too loud.”

“ _EARS! WHAT YOU ARE SAYING SOUNDS NOTHING LIKE EARS!_ ”

“Too loud!”

“ _EEEEEEEEEAR!_ ” He’d been pretty loud, but maybe Riku was still losing the nuance.

“How do I get you to stop screeching? That’s too high a pitch for me, Sora." 

” _YES, I’M SORA! GOOD JOB RIKU. NOW SAY EAR!_ “

"Pretty Sora?”

“ _NOT THIS AGAIN. NO, SORA NOT PRETTY. RIKU PRETTY. PRETTY RIKU. SAY EAR FOR ME, PRETTY RIKU!_ ”

“Too loud!” Riku was bending down again so their foreheads almost touched.

“TOO LOUD? _DO YOU WANT ME TO COPY YOU?_ TOO LOUD! _WHAT IS THAT?_ ” Sora switched between English and mermish.

Riku sighed heavily and leaned back. “Sora, please stop screaming at me. I can hear you perfectly fine. How can I make you understand?”

“ _IT’S OKAY. I STILL LIKE YOU, RIKU, EVEN IF YOU CAN’T SAY EAR_ ,” Sora encouraged.

There was a long moment of silence as both boys tried to think of the best way to be understood. Sora wracked his brain for any human words he’d overheard Roxas say. 

“Kiss?”

That was the wrong word. The human’s chest was as still as it had been when Sora needed to press the water out of it. Come to think of it, his color was retreating too, leaving him the same sickly pale as when he’d been waterlogged.

“ _DO YOU NEED MORE AIR AGAIN?_ ” Sora tried to push himself out of the water, intent on blowing air into Riku’s mouth like he had while he’d been unconscious.

Riku scrambled backward to the center of the rock.

Great. Another setback. They’d figure out this communication thing sooner or later.


	5. Observation (Axel/Roxas through the lens of the other merpeople)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the fourth of these pictures, in such that I thought it was so cute and the mergang should agree
> 
> https://shaky-mayhemm.tumblr.com/post/618406872384503808/sum-quick-lil-mermaid-and-fishermen-sketches-in#notes

Xion was the first to know. Roxas’s younger sister had always been the one he was closest to, more his other half than even Sora. That, and he felt he owed her for how quickly she’d chimed in and claimed Roxas had been with her all day, helping her create shell paths with Dory’s parents. She’d even found a way to wiggle one of the shells she had kept for her own collection out of her bag and press it into Roxas’s palm without Aqua seeing so he could show proof. Xion hadn’t been happy learning that he’d went to the surface without her, and Roxas had only churned the currents more when he admitted he’d spoken to a human. She’d begged him not to go back, and left Roxas sure that no matter how she protested to the contrary that she didn’t understand. Axel had proven every story Aqua had told them about sailors wrong even before they’d met properly, but Xion was more concerned that he’d been stalking the same human for weeks and his slip up had been premeditated. 

She agreed to keep his secret because she was loyal to a fault. The only times she’d broken a promise was when she’d told Aqua that Roxas had been the one to bet Sora he couldn’t last five minutes with his arm stuck in a sea anemone, and that only because Sora had a reaction to the toxin. She hadn’t even told Aqua when Vanitas had confessed to her his plans to run away, but then perhaps she should have. Roxas only had to convince her that he wouldn’t be hurt and he’d always come back. 

He decided the solution was to take her with him next time he saw his sailor. She refused to speak to Axel that first day even though she’d been the one who had snuck into Aqua’s rooms years ago and stolen as many volumes as she could of old King Eraqus's tablets for her and Roxas to learn all they could about the now forbidden surface. She refused to even come near. She stayed a whale length away from Axel’s lifeboat at all times, keeping only her eyes and the top of her head above water, all the better to glare at the human with. By the end of the night though, the storm of her gaze had broken to calm seas.

For her it was the way Axel looked at Roxas like he was a treasure, but not one to own, just wearing a never-ceasing awe that shone through even when he was acting out other emotions. She liked the way he laughed full-throated when Roxas told a joke and scoffed at Roxas when he said something stupid too. She couldn’t hear what was said, but she didn’t need to. Roxas was funny. Roxas was dumb. Roxas’s human listened, and more than he talked, though she saw him break in sometimes and speak with his hands as much as his mouth. She liked the way Axel kept trailing his hand in the water and then holding his hand above Roxas’s head to drip over his face, looking too concerned to have it be mistaken for teasing. She doubted Roxas had even said anything about the dry air. 

The next day she bobbed on the surface of the water next to Axel’s little boat beside Roxas. He was just as friendly to her: willing to listen, eager to listen even to every thought or question she had, and then provide his own answers and commentary; excited to teach and to learn, but also falling into softness that said he cared about more than knowledge. He didn’t look at her like a treasure though, and that remained the difference. He wasn’t a human stunned he had discovered merfolk were real. He was a man that was thanking his human gods that he’d discovered her brother. 

Xion was satisfied enough she let Roxas come to the surface without her after that (As long as he took her sometimes. She and Axel were best friends now. They’d agreed) and put herself in charge of explaining any long absences. 

Vanitas was the first to find out without being told. Roxas didn’t even know his estranged brother watched him and their siblings. Vanitas didn’t need to follow them to watch them. Master Xehanort had taught him how to see them reflected in a jagged shard of glass he’d salvaged from a shipwreck. He usually watched for information he could pass to his master that would further their plans, or so he told himself, but he found himself observing Roxas’ trips to the surface for weeks and not saying a word.

For Vanitas, it was how Roxas hardly stopped smiling for a moment. Roxas had always been the most like Vanitas, the only one out of the group of younger siblings the raven haired merman could remotely understand, quick to anger and slow to show he was happy. Roxas was still too innocent and too easily entranced by simple, stupid things for Vanitas to be able to stand his company for long, but he wasn’t obnoxious like Sora’s incomprehensible perpetual buoyancy. Until now at least. Roxas wasn’t just happy. He was glowing more in the sun than he ever did in the depths where their scales turned luminescent. He kept wagging his tail and it was disgusting . More than that, his shoulders relaxed. It wasn’t the slump or slouch Roxas sometimes fell into when he wasn’t filled with tension. Roxas looked at home.

It wasn’t completely foreign. Roxas belonged with their family; he wasn’t constantly ill at ease like Vanitas had been and still was even after leaving and finding the role he had really been born to play. It was significant though, to see Roxas look so at peace with a stranger. 

Vanitas decided Xehanort wouldn’t have this news, not from him at least. To be happy and at home for a moment? Vanitas could be jealous, but he couldn’t refuse Roxas the only thing he wanted himself.

Sora was the last to suspect but the third to know for sure. He was clumsy in following Roxas and would have been discovered easily if his twin hadn’t been so absorbed in the only track his mind would focus on these days. And that was what it was for Sora: the complete absorption. He wasn’t the only thing Roxas didn’t notice. Roxas sat on rocks until his scales started to look crusty and he wheezed. Roxas was startled by a seagull that had been tapping around Axel’s boat for several minutes and had been circling overhead long before that, apparently unaware of its pretense until it stood on his hand and squawked in his face as if affronted that he was a fish too large to eat. Roxas had to have a pod of leaping dolphins that he should have been expecting, considering he’d been the one to suggest their swimming route when he and Sora had talked to them that morning, pointed out to him by Axel. Sora would have been worried not endeared if he hadn’t been forced to chase Axel’s little wooden boat he’d taken from the the big boat when Axel had neglected to secure it properly to the rock island he and Roxas had claimed, and then further failed to notice it starting to float away. Both parts of the couple still didn’t seem to notice him when he towed the boat back. 

They were lost, utterly lost, and Sora wasn’t going to be the one to admit he’d found them.

Besides, he was glad not to be the oblivious one for once.

Kairi was the last one, save Aqua, to see Roxas with Axel and the hardest to convince. Her protective instincts weren’t of a sibling that could also be swayed by biased affection, and she hadn’t heard the story of how King Eraqus had died enough times for it to seem more like a scary story to ensure good behavior than a tragedy to be mourned like the princes and Xion. It was one thing when she suspected Roxas was just following boats like Xion had told her they’d done half their lives. It was concerning then, but Xion had rattled off the precautions they took, and Kairi had concluded it wasn’t her place to interfere. Sora telling her Roxas was in love with a human and didn’t care about secrecy or distance was another. Axel didn’t seem like the type of human capable of such atrocities as Aqua had warned about, but by the time any of them could know for sure it could be too late. She planned to corner Roxas on his way back to the palace after he’d left his little rendezvous and give him an ultimatum of whether he’d rather stop seeing the human willingly or have her go to Aqua, but then she saw the kiss.

She wouldn’t be able to defend why it made all reservations melt away. It had to be witnessed. She could say Axel kissed Roxas like he was the water that sustained all life and he had to drink every drop. She could talk about the contrast of the softness in the way he touched Roxas, as if he’d been trusted with something fragile he’d break and end up broken himself if he did. She could laugh until she cried about how Roxas’s tail flapped so forcefully that he’d propelled Axel’s boat at least a dolphin-length when they’d shared their last kiss goodbye, and then try to describe how even the scrunched corners of Roxas’s closed eyes told their own story of a moment so perfect you felt you could just float away on a current. None of that quite captured the feeling of being there and understanding what the tall tales were speaking about when they included true love’s kiss. It all sounded like fanciful nonsense when reduced to words.

Kairi dived and headed back to the palace on her own, swearing that even if all she had was fanciful nonsense, she’d try to defend Roxas and his human when Aqua found out. Then she found Sora coaxing a pod of squid to play a game he’d just invented that involved five different goalposts and several starfish for each player to use as projectiles. She asked if they could talk alone, but ended up helping him convince the starfish that they would have fun playing his game instead. There would be other days to see if they could create a fairytale of their own. She’d be grateful later, because some fairytales didn’t just feature princes and princesses but a knight needed to propel it to happily ever after.

Aqua had secrets kept from her for too long and then uncovered in traumatic ways, which should have hardened her heart until there was no softness left, but a combined testimony was hard to argue against. Find someone who cares and shows it even in small actions. Find someone who is your home. Find love consuming. Find a passion that’s pure. It’s what she always wished for Roxas and for the rest of her charges.

In the end, what call could anyone make but to swim away and let Roxas be happy.


	6. Drowning (Axel/Roxas)

Angry waves crashed against each other, as if fighting over who would drown him. With well over six feet to his frame, still lean but no longer able to be described as lanky as it could have been when he’d been younger, solid muscles defined from hauling nets day after day turning analogy from broom to the solid denseness of a ship’s mast, Axel was unused to feeling small or weak, even in the middle of the sea, having been half raised by her lady the deep, dark blue until he was lulled into viewing her as benevolent and demuring to allow him some measure of control as she gave him food, carried him where he needed to go, and soothed him with her vastness, acting as welcome, peaceful envelopment. He was paying for the hubris of ever personifying the sea as motherly or assuming she’d honor any bargain now as she tossed him around like a toy, a petulant child set on rough handling until her plaything was broken and reveling in stomping the pieces. Axel was thrown side to side, up, down, in circles, every which way, dunked under and spun until he fought toward the bottom of the sea, guiding himself with aching, furiously working but misguided arms in fits of fighting for air for his burning lungs.

Luckily the next moment found him turned and shoved until at last he broke the surface, gasping and sputtering, gulping what he could before he was hauled several feet into the air by the back of his collar, hands of the waves giving him no peace, and bodily thrown back beneath the surface to tumble some more. The salt of the sea scoured his eye sockets as bottle green eyes were rendered useless by the utter dearth of light that struck up, down, sky, and sea all even more nebulous as concepts. A flash of lightning brought definition back to the world but fragmented and played in leaping flashes of conflicting stimuli that danced and laughed while Axel’s limbs disobeyed his frantic mind, embracing a second life as writhing eels that basked in the water, cutting their own currents but refusing a task as large as carrying a soon to be corpse away from its dark inevitability when nearly all their strength had already been near exhausted in such exercises in futility. 

The edges of rational thought popped like bubbles, protests lost and dispersed to the unrelenting sea. He knew pain still, focused like the strike of a blunt object to the back of his skull and crawling in his chest cavity, wrapping itself in long tendrils securely around his ribs, fitting in the space between them and the soft tissues underneath to make a permanent home, prising bone apart with loving patience, easing, burning, capturing more room to grow until an unbearable ache with sharp drum strikes of the beat of his funeral march. 

Then, finally, he knew peace once more as he gave himself to darkness and the tongues of wet salt sliding down the back of his throat, the taste of lover and mother ocean at her purest as she opened up her arms and tugged him deeper, and whispered to let go. It was as simple as breathing in. They made peace once more. She would not toy with him and he would not struggle against her. Axel’s heartbeat slowed as the last strands of panic and tension bled from him. He let the ocean have her way, sighing into her embrace. 

Breathe in. No more breathing out.

Roxas wove a net of curses, targeting both the gods of the lightless trenches of the ocean floor and the foreign skies, as well as the humans’ overdeveloped drive to explore and conquer and underdeveloped non-adaptive breathing methods, this particular red-maned human’s dead weight, and the nudibranch and two strands of seaweed that must serve as his brain for him to grip the human under his armpits and hug him close to his body as he powered his tail and strained against the pull of what was typically thought to be fate of reckless humans instead of just letting nature take its course. It was a wild impulse–and a self-destructive one; there were no safe places to take a human except into the waiting maw of some of the larger brethren of the deep–but he couldn’t let the human die.

Nor could he see the redhead as nothing more than hook and net, waiting predator whose softness and vulnerability when submerged in the world below was only deception. The sight of him was more like the stirring in your chest when the whale pods sang of the secrets of past lives and the longing to return. To consider his death was to taste only the salt in the sea and not feel it sustaining life.

The human was destiny, and that was harder to fight than the currents.


	7. Siren Song (Demyx/Xion)

Axel had told Xion the legend of the siren, bringing to life with wild gesture and lurid details the tales of otherworldly beauties with voices still yet more fair than their faces who lured the unsuspecting in just to dash them against rocks or to steal their breath with a kiss then keep them where they couldn’t breathe–and that if they were lucky and weren’t eaten alive, flesh rent from bones by sharpened teeth. The warning had stuck fast in her mind, making such an obvious impression on her that it became Kairi and Sora’s favorite pastime over the next few days to hide or circle behind her and hum to see if she’d startle. 

Real siren song was much different, haunting and enrapturing even filtered through the distortion of water that should have dampened it completely, but instead conveyed melodious tones directly to the ears they were meant for. Full lines were lost, but it seemed design, as all you could hear were stray words of the plea. “Swim to me” rhymed with “destiny” and the rest just impressions of words that you found your heart understood even if your ears couldn’t catch (close, you needed to be closer)

Xion knew exactly what she was dealing with, thanks to Axel’s warnings, but neither knowledge nor fear made it any easier to resist. For one day she could manage it, keeping herself busy, taking on projects from others. The voice left after a few hours. The spell remained, luring her to seek out the source even after it faded, but the desire waned. The second day the voice returned, gliding not just into her ears but down her throat, making her drink it in until she could taste it, caressing her eyelids when she blinked so she could see it. She tried to put distance between her and the bewitching voice, but it wrapped around her and begged her to stay (begged her closer, but accepted staying near enough to hear it as a compromise).

The third day she broke down and asked Sora if he heard the voice too, the need for an ally outweighing the fear he’d think she was going mad. When he said he did, it was with an absent and offhand remark about it being pretty that might as well have been a no. He didn’t hear it, couldn’t hear it. not like she did. or he wouldn’t have been so flippant. 

Finding out the difference, how Sora could hear the music but not feel the pull became the new mystery to pursue, a distraction from bewitching song and chance at shattering the bars of the prison her mind was in, replaying melody even in her sleep. It was a mystery too soon solved though, when observing Sora became an exercise in endurance listening to him wax poetic on Riku’s virtues despite reading her disinterest. He was in love. No magic could touch it.

So she was alone.

Three more days. The song changed (“love’s not a fallacy” rhymed with “follow the current to be free”) but only became more enthralling, accompanied by an instrument that produced foreign sounds she couldn’t match with any of her own (another distraction, backfiring, making the obsession worse).

Ultimately, there was only one way to deal with temptation. You had to give in.

Maybe Axel was exaggerating. She’d heard worse stories about the human world that had proven not to be true–proven by Axel himself, human and kind, and also an authority on his own land and creatures, making Xion’s own optimistic argument fall apart. “Sirens” had to be the creatures that had gotten miscredited as “humans” in King Eraqus’s and Aqua’s stories of the surface. If Axel said something, it had to be true, so she thought and so she misunderstood Roxas’s human and his sense of humor almost as deeply as she’d misunderstood the scary story Axel had been telling about what he’d “known” about the merfolk before Roxas had rescued him from a storm. 

Xion wasn’t without hope. She was a fierce enough warrior to look out for herself against sharks and squid, and charming enough with smiles, diplomatic words, and light magic of her own to tame more enemies than she ever had to fight. She would hope to win the siren, or to injure it enough so it would leave. She couldn’t kill it even in her daydreams. It wasn’t the predator’s fault that it needed to hunt. She didn’t want to end the siren’s beautiful song, just make sure she wasn’t its prey. She couldn’t go on in such a way.

If Xion had asked Roxas about sirens instead of Sora, then the whole mess would have been sorted, but she hadn’t, and confusion remained, serving fate well enough as the wayward mermaid powered her tail toward the surface, breaking through barriers to blue sky, dry air that burned to breathe, and a small wooden boat of the kind her brothers’ humans, Axel and Riku, rowed to the sandbars sometimes (life boat, Axel had called it but it seemed too small to spend a life on, even their proper craft was too small for that) with a body that looked standardly human, though perhaps with eyes too bright and features too fair–far more handsome than Axel’s brash bright red and green set against skin pale as a fish belly, step away from translucent like a jelly, with distracting speckles or Riku’s sardine back hair and mouth too used to frowning–in a sprawled recline sideways not longways, with feet (too large and tough, brown with darker scratches like the love token Roxas had stolen from Axel–boot, Sora had called it, smug with being the smartest of the hatchmates for once– rather than soft and pale with tiny fingers like Axel and Riku’s feet) hanging over open air, dangling close to the water, and a head of golden hair longer than her own, but shaved close on the sides and silver metal winking in its ears propped up against the other side with the strange instrument Xion had heard with the voice, lying across its chest.

“Siren?” Xion called to the creature boldly (or she meant to sound bold, though her nerves had her voice warbling a question), calling it by the name Axel had given it. Land siren. It had to be. It had the voice that called her. It made music to make you fall in love.

The boat pitched wildly as the siren flopped violently as if he were beached instead of native to the world above and gasping his last breath. The siren disappeared in the bottom of the boat and then the head reappeared peering over the edge of the side closer to her, blue-green eyes impossibly wide, large and shining like a deep sea fish but catching the light like glass baubles found in a shipwreck. It babbled in what sounded like the human tongue, using words Xion hadn’t learned but tried to commit to memory now to ask Roxas about later. The siren leaned over the edge of the boat, sucking great gulps of air, seemingly dying again, and parroted its own name back to her, calling out siren and referencing something called a Larxene who had pulled its leg for some purpose.

“Siren,” Xion took a moment to gather her nerve, forgetting what she thought she could dare ask him. 

The siren seemed to read her mind and intention, despite her not being able to sort her words. “You ain’t getting me in the water, no matter how pretty you are!”

The siren shouldn’t have held the same sway not singing, and she’d been called pretty often enough that it shouldn’t have power enough to send her head floating in the currents, but Xion found herself preening twisting her tail beneath the waves and rearranging her shoulders above the waterline so the dusting of scales that decorated them caught the sunlight. “I swam to you because of your song, but you won’t trap me on shore.”

“You heard my song?”

“You wanted me to hear it. You sang it for me.”

The siren reeled back for a second and then an agreeing smile spread that made it look more lovestruck than the prey, Xion thought. “Yeah, I guess I did. I wrote it for you….yeah, that seems right.”

“Why? Do you want to eat me with your sharp teeth?”

“I could never! I don’t even have sharp teeth.” The siren opened his mouth wide to prove it, leaning further over the boat’s edge and making it rock.

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I…maybe just to sing to you again.”

Xion’s tail swished and she giggled and ducked her head, something more than the dry air making her head light as a bubble about to pop. “I’d like that very much, siren.”

“You think I’m the siren?”

“Are you not?”

“No, I’m just a Demyx.”

“Demyx? I’m Xion."


End file.
